Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2008 Review

Time to go kill Bambi's mother.

Hunting games are always presented with an interesting quandary during the design process. The sport of hunting isn't exciting in the least bit. The majority of your time is spent sitting in one spot waiting for that one prize buck to wander aimlessly into your sights. You get one shot and one shot only at taking down the award winning animal. But how do you make a videogame that encompasses that feeling while still making it fun to sit down and play for longer than three and a half minutes? If it was truly authentic no one would want to play it, but make it too much like a videogame and you've alienated your core audience. Such is the crux of why most Cabela games are released with more of a whimper than any form of a bang.

The game suffers from the same identity crisis that most Cabela games do in that it offers the experience of sitting in a tree stand - albeit for an unrealistically short time period - but then it tosses in some sort of bullet-time meter governed by adrenaline and a hunter's eye which horrifically brings out your targets by painting the scene in black with your targets shining a bright yellow. I understand that they need to endear the Cabela hunting license to as wide a videogame audience as possible, but when you're fighting a cougar who can take six rifle blasts from pointblank range, and have a hunter that can be mauled by said cougar more than three times, you know something is awry.

Let's kill things.

The gameplay in Big Game Hunter hinges on players venturing to different lands, meeting the hunting ranger in those different lands, playing a mini-game of shooting little varmints, going off and shooting a certain number of bigger varmints, then going after the trophy varmint. Achievement unlocked, reset and restart in a different hunting location. It's about as exciting as it sounds.

There are small deviations along the way. Sometimes, and this is a rare occasion, you'll have to climb up a rock face by feverishly tapping certain buttons at the appropriate times, or keep balance on a log bridge by doing the same. Regardless, none of it is all that fulfilling when there are so many other quality titles out there.

One of the few true joys of hunting, more accurately one of the joys that stems from playing a hunting videogame, is completely diminished in Big Game Hunter. The ability to switch between several different firearms without having to worry about lugging around a big bag of equipment as you would in reality is what could really separate hunting games from the real thing, yet Big Game Hunter provides no incentive to explore the firearms at the player's disposal. I played through the game using only my standard rifle, switching to the crossbow and using my duck call only when commanded by the game. I continuously unlocked an arsenal of weapons, but they remained totally unused. Maybe if I started failing hunts because I was using inferior hardware, maybe then I would have felt compelled to switch it up, sadly that never happened.

Another "exciting" part of hunting is exploration, just being able to chart out your own hunting ground and finding where the animals are hiding. Big Game Hunter holds your hand entirely too much with its painfully linear level designs and mission map that literally places a bulls eye on the piece of land where you can find your next target. Following the one available path to the clearly specified spot on a map isn't exactly what the experience of hunting should be like.

The Wii controls actually work fairly well when compared to the current-gen offering. Pulling back on the B button while lining your shot up with the Wii remote is fun enough, though aiming with a scope can be a bit tricky as your viewpoint shifts back and forth a bit too much. Tracking animals can also be a bit tricky, but the experience is more immersive than on 360 or PS2 thanks to the fact that you are actually aiming something tangible rather than maneuvering a simple analog stick.

Visually the Wii version of the game actually holds up fairly well. Thanks to the fact that it was clearly made on Xbox 360 then the development team ported over the game's assets it compares favorably to other games that we've seen on the system. The only real drawback is the weird depth of field effect that doesn't adjust when you zoom in on an area. Instead you get an oddly pixilated view of a low resolution tree branch. Big Game Hunter might not blow your hair back (But what does on Wii?) but it looks fairly solid on Nintendo's system.

The Verdict

Like most Cabela games, Big Game Hunter is lacking in most categories that really matter; mainly the overall fun factor that the game offers. Real hunters will be disappointed in the game’s arcade elements, and videogame aficionados will be pissed off that they’re wasting their time playing a hunting game when they could be fighting splicers or Covenant aliens instead. I suppose if you are a diehard hunter then this game is the cream of the crop, just steer clear of using the adrenaline-based bullet time, or thinking about the fact that the game feels nothing like actual hunting, and you’ll be fine.